(ED recovery) What the heck is normal?!

I am so confused. Honestly, I do not understand how normal people maintain their weight. It seems that compared to me, everybody else eats next to nothing, and yet they're not underweight?! I've got to the point where I can't go without my morning cereal bar without being absolutely starving and faint-feeling, yet loads of girls at my school will skip lunch and then have 'a packet of crisps or something' later on - and they're not particularly skinny!

When you leave hospital they give you this lovely little meal plan with your breakfast, snacks, desserts, sandwiches and what not... And yet no one else seems to eat like this! I'm the only person in my family who eats a decent breakfast (my mum tends to have a slice of toast but I'd be starving if that was all I ate!) Seriously, if I miss a meal my hunger pangs are insane, I feel like I'm about to faint and I start shaking.

I don't understand how I can be so underweight yet I eat SO much more than everyone else. I don't understand how other people maintain a normal weight eating bugger all. Tis so confusing and makes me feel like a right little piggy next to everyone else - I hate eating when other people aren't. Grr.

Sorry - little rant! Can anyone else relate to this?  I used to be fat (see my gallery) and I know how I got like that.. I just don't get how other people aren't either severely under or overweight based on the extremes of how their diets appear.

Just to say- honestly don't mean to accuse/offend/annoy ANYONE on this board with this post, it's just people in my life who I don't get. Namely school friends, certain family members who've been staying with us, etc etc.

Grrrr.

Honey, why should other people's eating habits matter to you? You're who's important right now. It's good you got this off of your chest, but really - don't worry about it. It's their body at the end of the day, and you ultimately know what is healthy, and what is not. And skipping meals, eating only a slice of toast for breakfast... you know that's not.

As for how overweight people are overweight but skipping meals? Usually, it's either then down to what they eat later on (bingeing so commonly caused by missing meals), or that lovely old starvation mode. You don't have to be underweight to be anorexic, undereating, or malnourished.

Yeah I know you're right and that I should think about myself - it's just hard when I guess ED makes you feel so competitive with other people - I used to get a huge kick out of not eating when other people were.. now it's the total opposite, all I seem to do is eat while other people don't even think about it!

I'm just annoyed cos we had my Gran to stay and she's got *major* issues with food - I mean, I eat more than my mum (at meals, anyway) but at least she tries to have something with me at every meal and support me as much as possible - sometimes she'll eat with me when I know she wouldn't normally be eating just to keep me company. My gran just really got to me recently, kept saying stuff like 'No dinner for me darling, I had lunch.' - Er. And? lol!!

Aww lala you always make me see when I'm being irrational.. I guess at the end of this I will have a healthy body and metabolism and that's what matters.

o__O Yeah, what happened to "three meals a day"? Lol. I suppose it depends on how soon you asked her after lunch, mind. Still, honestly, don't worry about them - worry about you! x] Recovery is a chance to be extreeemely selfish. Y'know. Within reason.

OOO i started ranting about this in the weight gain thread, it drives me nuts!!! I just dont get it, but then again i've always been like this, even at a normal weight I couldnt go more than 3 hours tops wihtout feeling shaky if I hadnt eaten, and now i'm even more concious of it. Seriously, i've even tallied up friends and families calories by estimating throughout the day, and it's ridiculous, they should all be anorexic, i also don't get why I"m the underweight one eating 3000 cals a day and they're all considered normal and hardly eat anything. or if they do its sporadic, they go out to eat once or twice a week and eat more then, but they wont have breakfast or lunch, not to mention snacking is an entirely foreign concept. I absolutely hate when I go out to dinner with someone and I'll be starving because it will have been all of 2 hours since my last snack and they say something like "oh i had a late lunch at like 1, i'm not that hungry..."

URRGGHH, can you tell it's an issue with me too? haha, sorry that wasn't much help, but I can totally relate!

1st, you dont see "other ppl" all the time, you just dont, you dont know what and how much theyre eating when youre not w/ them, and they are eating bc if they werent then theyd be underweight, like you, but theyre not.

also, you get hungry every few hrs bc your body is still starving.  other ppl who dont eat every 2 hrs or whatever arent starving as some of you say you are, bc other ppl are not underweight and their bodies can handle eating at more spread out times during the day.

stop comparing yourself, w/ food, weight, excercise, who the hell cares what other ppl eat, or dont eat.  who the hell cares?  rt now, youre underweight+unhealthy, even once you get to a healthy weight, who cares, youre your own person, do what you want.  if you want to go back to eating not enough, like you think others do, then thats your perogotive.  ultimately, you have to decide whats rt for you, based on your needs and wants, not other ppl's.

THANK YOU!! So it's not just me being loopy.. Or if it is, you guys are loopy with me! What confuses me the most is people who get up and go to school or work on an empty stomach. HOW DO THEY DO THAT? The weird thing is that I never used to eat breakfast pre-ED but now I wake up and I literally feel ILL with hunger until I've had it. At school I have a massive raw food bar at 10.30 then by 12.40 (lunch time) I'm literally jumping up and down to get to the lunch room (if jumping didn't burn calories that is) because I'm so hungry, when all my friends are like 'Ohh there's a queue let's come back in half an hour or not bother.' NO NO NO let's NOT come back in half an hour because I am HUNGRY. And all my friends are healthy or slightly overweight! I don't get how I'm underweight and they're not, I really don't..

It's funny, on this board I can 'type' that I'm hungry but I have major issues with saying the words out loud. Next time, I might go to my room and say it to myself in the mirror.

'I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I'm hungry.'

Your post sums up EXACTLY what goes through my mind on a daily basis! I also vented about his on the weight gain thread. I'm so glad I'm not the only one, I honestly thought I was insane! I know that logically it really doesn't matter at all what others are doing and I should just forget about it, but since when has ED been logical?! Though I'm much better now at sticking to my meal plan regardless of what others are doing, the guilt & worrying still crops up... I'm working on telling ED to SHUT UP :)

Babe, i really want you to do two things.

1) I want you to look in the mirror and see THAT person, and how she is the only person that matters... because she is the one you have to live with everyday. All other people are just white noise in comparison.

2) Say FU to Ed and other people who feed those ED thoughts. Who the He** are they to make you feel a certain way. I dont know any of them per-say... but, if i had to choose... i would pick you six times a week and twice on sunday. If anything... i could totally see them posting on other online sites saying: "How can this girl eat so much and not gain anything? All i had today was a packet of crisps!" Little do they know, you are gaining and your gonna blow them out of the water (physically and personality-wise).

Clay, would you mind terribly if I married you? We can be the first CC Wedding, and oh the fun we'd have planning the buffet...

Thanks so much buddy, your posts always make me smile :-D

This post sums up what goes through mine too. I wonder how all these girls aren't as skinny as me when they often only eat a bit of fruit and a packet of crisps all day. But there you go, at the end of the day, when they go home, they could be eating ANYTHING. Their dinners may be really greasy and unhealthy, maybe that's why they're not underweight. We've just got to pull ourselves together and ignore their food habits, WE are more important.

In fact, sometimes it's quite liberating to be able to eat anything in front of them, and see their jealously, because we know that they are wondering how we got so skinny eating like we do :)

And I know what you mean about the "Im hungry" thing, I'm always too self conscious to tell people Im hungry or to complain when I am or whatever.

I try to get my brother to eat with me when we're at home. Like if I want a snack I'll be like "Joe come have a snack with me, dyou want some chocolate?" and most of the time he will, which makes me feel better :]

And I wanna come to your wedding :P ahaha how awesome would that be lol? You'd be my sister-in-law;)

xxxxx

I go through the same thing. I remember when I went on a tour for an art school - oh my god. There were 13 floors. The tour guide had us using the stairs the whole time, lots of back and forth business. The school was enormous. It was after my first bout with anorexia and I was still having issues with holding onto my weight. My god by the time we reached the top floor, I was literally so starving I couldn't stand. Happens to me alot. I also get very cold when my body knows it should be eating soon. Its like having a built in alarm clock. I like having an eating buddy too! My mom always eats the three meals with me, plus a snack before bed. When my brother is home, I usually get him to eat snacks with me too. Not that often, but its nice when I'm sitting there at the table with my muffin and yogurt etc, to have someone else eating a muffin too instead of just a cuppa coffee.

It is true though, you can't see everything. Plus lots of girls will say they haven't eaten, when in reality they have. I have memories of being in cafeteria study hall, seeing lots of the girls chow down on bacon/egg/cheese biscuits. Two classes later, I'd see the same girl telling everyone she hadn't eaten all day in the locker room. :sigh: I'll never understand why people try to brag about that. When I was deeper into my eating disorder, I would be washed with shame when people asked me if I had eaten that day, and I felt so guilty when I would lie. At least now if someone asks,I can honestly tell them what I've eaten, and get a laugh at their gawking "You really ate that ?!?!?"

Yeah, I've noticed this with my roommates, who I do see 90% of what they eat. One of them is very thin and one of them is average. Actually, they're both very healthy looking. One of them will say something like, "Ugh I'm so hungry all I've eaten today are some pretzels" at say...3 pm. However, I watched her eat an ENTIRE BAG OF PRETZELS WITH 9 SERVINGS IN IT DIPPED IN NUTELLA STRAIGHT FROM THE JAR. Yeah sure, just some pretzels. Still a lot of food. If I were to describe at that point what I'd eaten in the day it would go, "Yeah I'm starving too, I had an orange and cereal with milk and then for a snack I had a banana, then for lunch I had a salad, a cup of soup, and an apple"

Who ate more calories? she did. Who ate more food? I did.

It's all a matter of perspective. As a health conscious girl, I find myself eating a lot more than my less health conscious friends because my choices are lower cal so I need more to satisfy my needs.